In the recent years, non-volatile memories are commonly used in various electronic devices, such as personal computers, laptop computers, smart phones, tablets, and etc. A non-volatile memory includes an array of memory cells. For the purpose of driving down costs, more bits are stored in one memory cell to increase its density. Multi-Level-Cell (MLC) technology is adopted to increase the memory capacity at low fabrication cost.
During a lifetime of a non-volatile memory, repeated programming and erasing operations lead its malfunction and cause bit errors in the memory cells. Error Correction Codes (ECC) operation is used to improve the reliability of the non-volatile memory. However, the operation time of ECC operation and the data accuracy are big issues in memory design.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a method and a device for programming a non-volatile memory to improve programming performance and ECC operation efficiency.